


The Hang of Thursdays

by sophiahelix



Series: Temperance on the TARDIS [2]
Category: Bones (TV), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-10
Updated: 2008-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-19 13:52:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiahelix/pseuds/sophiahelix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hang of Thursdays

**Author's Note:**

> This was for Lodessa's threesome challenge, though it turned out gen, and also somewhat inspired by a comment of Fourteenlines's. The original crossover idea came from an icon pairing meme that gave me Temperance Brennan/Tenth Doctor. So I can't take real credit for the idea of smooshing the universes together. *g*

"So, this is Booth," Bones said. "Booth, this is the Doctor."

"Uh, nice to meet you," Booth said, shaking his hand. "Dr. – ?"

"Doctor."

"Dr. Doctor?"

"The Doctor."

"Doctor of what?"

"Various things."

He looked pretty pleased with that answer, and Booth shot a wary glance at Bones.

"Who is this guy?"

"He's a scientist," she said. She folded her arms, tipped her head to the side and looked at him with narrowed eyes. "His fields of study wouldn't really interest you."

"They wouldn't, huh?" Booth leaned his arm on the diner counter and drummed his fingers. "I guess they interested you for the past week."

He looked the guy up and down, slowly, and then looked back at Bones, raising an eyebrow. It took her a second until she scoffed, her mouth falling open in affront.

"Oh, don't _even_ ," she said, glaring at him.

"Doctor?" Booth asked, without looking away.

"What?" said the Doctor, jumping. He looked back and forth between Booth and Bones wildly for a moment. "Oh, no. No no no no no. Never. Of course not. Ms. Brennan has a – fine mind. Very fine mind. Finest thing about her."

The guy's hair bounced as he talked, and seriously, it was like he was on speed.

"Are you on speed?" Booth asked.

"What?"

"The drug," Bones said. "He wants to know if you're on methamphetamines."

The Doctor reached up to scratch his head, kind of like a squirrel. "No, wouldn't metabolize right. Pointless, really."

"Really?" Bones asked, looking interested. "So the affected neurotransmitters – "

Booth raised a hand. "I get it. Every day is a squint party with you two. So where the hell have you been?"

He got two pairs of wide eyes focused on him for that one, and identical hesitant expressions.

"Out," Bones said at last, lamely.

"Out?"

"Out – er."

"What?"

"Outer _space_ ," she hissed, looking like she was annoyed at having to answer at all. "Not on this planet."

"Well," the Doctor said. "Sometimes on the planet. Just not here."

"Right," Bones said.

"Or now."

Booth moved his raised hand to cover his eyes instead. "I need a drink."

"You know the Royal doesn't serve alcohol," Bones said immediately.

"I know," Booth said, his voice muffled behind his hand.

"You always complain about that. You say that if a – a 'hardworking guy' can't get a beer at the end of the day – "

"I know!" Booth said. "God, Bones, could you just let up for a minute? You've been gone for a week and I've spent every minute since last Thursday wondering if you were buried alive in a junkyard somewhere."

"A week?" Bones said. "You said you could bring me back exactly when I left," she snapped, locking her laser beam eyes on the Doctor.

"Right," said the Doctor, rubbing his chin and looking up determinedly at the ceiling. "About that. It's more – relative."

"Yeah, look, I still have no clue what you're talking about," Booth said. "But taking off when there's a serial killer who has you as number one on his hit list? Not your brightest idea."

Bones pressed her lips together and reached out to rest her hand on Booth's. "I'm sorry, Seeley," she said in that softer voice that sometimes came out of nowhere and made him think she was a real person after all. "I didn't think it would matter if I took a little vacation."

"You didn't think I'd notice you were gone?"

"Well, I didn't say _that_."

"Come on, Bones, I went a whole week without anybody buzzing in my ear about the social customs of native Peruvians or rattling off the bones of the head while I was on the phone. That's the kind of thing a guy notices."

Bones smiled a little. "OK. Next time I'll leave a note."

"Next time!" said the Doctor. Booth looked up. The Doctor was bouncing around on his heels now, hands jammed into his pockets. "Excellent. We'll get the rest of your things and be off."

Bones sat up and pulled her hand away. Booth's hand felt a little cold now.

"We're taking another trip?" she asked, lighting up like when she was studying some particularly gruesome injury. "Great. I'm dying to meet Margaret Mead and get some insight on her methodologies."

"Oh, I don't know," said the Doctor. He looked down at Booth and grinned, a kind of wicked smile that looked like a ferris wheel slightly askew. The fact that his glasses were also askew helped the impression. "I think your friend here would prefer something a little more – interstellar."

"Wait, Booth?" Bones asked, her voice falling flat. She looked back at Booth with the kind of pitying frown she used when he wasn't following her gibberish. "I don't think he'd be interested."

"Nonsense," said the Doctor. "I think Mars for a start, don't you?"

He pointed at Booth's midsection, and Booth looked down at the Marvin the Martian buckle he was wearing today. Parker had thought it was funny.

"What?" Booth asked.

"He's asking if you want to go to Mars," Bones said, raising her voice a little. He hated when she talked to him like he was – well, Parker. "In his spaceship. Slash time-machine."

"Well, technically, it's – " the Doctor said.

"I know," Bones said. "He wouldn't get it."

"I might get it," Booth said. "If I had any _freaking_ clue what you are _talking about_."

Bones looked around and leaned in. "OK. So. Listen. He's an alien."

"An _alien_?"

"Shhh," Bones said. "Yeah. I can't explain the whole thing, but I swear it's true, Booth. And he's got this ship that can take you anywhere. And any _when_."

Booth looked up at the Doctor for confirmation, raising his eyebrow so high it hurt, but the guy just bobbed his head again, still smiling.

"So – you want to come along?"

"Where?"

"Wherever. Mars, I guess?"

"Mars."

"Mars," the Doctor said, hovering in. "Look, come on, get your things and we'll be off before I change my mind. I've found that bringing the boyfriend rarely ends well."

"The boyfriend?" Booth said, at the same time as Bones said "Are you kidding me?"

They looked at each other.

"Wait, why is that funny?" he said, at the same time as Bones said "He is not my boyfriend."

They looked at the Doctor.

"We're partners," they said at the same time.

"Right," said the Doctor.

 

*****

 

"Catch," said the Doctor, throwing something shiny at Bones. She caught it badly, half-dropping it before the chain wrapped around her finger. Normally Booth would have made fun of her for having zero coordination outside the lab, but he was still standing in the middle of the control room and trying to grasp the fact that he was _standing in a control room_. On a spaceship.

"This is a spaceship," he said. "We just flew in a spaceship."

"Oh, I like this one," the Doctor said. "Don't have to worry about him wandering off on his own. He'll be at it for another hour at least."

"I'm in a spaceship."

"Booth," Bones said. "Come on. We're going out."

"Out where?"

"We can just leave him," the Doctor said. "He'll probably still be here when we get back. I almost never lose them."

"No, he has to come," Bones said, shaking her head. "We came all this way just so he could see stupid Mars."

"Mars?" Booth said. "I'm on Mars."

Bones looked at the Doctor.

"We could put him on a lead like a dog," the Doctor said. "Just in case he gets loose. I've got one in the back."

Bones walked up to Booth and frowned at him in an appraising kind of way. "Hey," she said. "Booth. Come on. You don’t want to miss this."

"We're in outer space," Booth said.

"Or we could just handcuff him to the railing," the Doctor said. "I've got a pair of those in back too."

Bones sighed and tightened her jaw in a way Booth recognized as meaning _extreme stubbornness ahead_. "You are not behaving in a rational manner."

"Rational?" Booth asked. "I'm in outer space. What's there to be rational about?"

"It's not outer space," Bones said. "It's just Mars."

" _Just_ Mars?"

"Plain old ordinary Mars," Bones said. "We're not even out of sight of Earth."

"Well, technically, we're not 'in sight' of Earth," the Doctor said.

They looked at him.

"The TerraDome's been subsidized with adverts, you know. Naked life forms and personal injury attorneys as far as the eye can see."

"The TerraDome?" Bones asked.

"Oh, yeah, went up in 2790," the Doctor said casually, a malicious twinkle in his eye. "The TerraDodecahedron was terribly unpopular. People running into vertices willy-nilly."

"We are in the future," Booth said.

"Oh yes," the Doctor said, leaning against a wall. He lounged.

"The year 2790?"

"3138."

"There are lawyers in 3138?"

"There're lawyers at the end of the universe – who else was going to draw up the contracts for the rubbish removal?"

"You spent a week with this guy?" Booth asked Bones. "It's like talking to a fortune cookie."

"You get used to it," Bones said. She looked up at him for a moment. "Come on, Booth. Seriously. Aren't you curious at all?"

Booth looked over at the Doctor, still lounging like a champion. "Yes," he said grudgingly.

"Great," Bones said, practically skipping towards the door. Booth pulled at her sleeve.

"Whoa, wait," he said. "Where are our spacesuits?"

"Didn't you hear?" she asked. "There's a TerraDome."

"What the hell is that?"

"Let's find out," Bones said, as the Doctor opened the door.

 

*****

 

"I'm not sure I should have eaten those," Booth said from behind his hand as they left the restaurant. "Nothing purple and square could be healthy."

"Compressed algae cubes are actually an incredibly efficient energy source," Bones said.

"That was algae? I just ate algae from Mars?"

"No, silly, it's farmed on an asteroid. Read the menu."

"The menu was in Martian!"

Bones shrugged. "It's a created pan-language. All you needed was some elementary Mandarin, Hindi, and Farsi to figure it out."

"Fantastic," Booth said, putting a hand on his stomach. "I think I need to lie down. Or puke. Maybe both."

Bones looked at the Doctor and rolled her eyes. "I'll have to take him back to the TARDIS. I told you this was a bad idea."

"He'll get used to it," said the Doctor. "Probably. They almost always do."

"I'll be back in a few," Bones said, pulling a key out of her pocket. "Don't do anything interesting without me."

"Hey, you have a key," Booth said. "Why don't I get a key?"

"You'd lose it," Bones said.

"Why don't I get a key?" Booth asked the Doctor.

The Doctor smiled. "I don't fancy you."

 

*****

 

"How many stairs are there in this place?" Booth complained, clutching at the rail.

"As many as necessary," Bones said. "I think it changes based on recognition of heat signatures and physical attributes."

Booth stopped and looked at her, just looked for a long moment.

"What?" Bones said. "Do I have algae in my teeth?"

"You're amazing," Booth said. "You get thrown into a time machine with an alien and after a week you're already reading Martian and giving me a guided tour. I don't know anybody else who could do that."

"I'm a fast learner," Bones said, looking, surprisingly, a little embarrassed. Booth shook his head.

"It's not that."

"What is it?"

"Well, it's just confirmed something I've wondered about for a long time now," Booth said, leaning in to study her face.

"What are you talking about?" She sounded kind of nervous, like he was unsettling her.

He licked his lips.

"Booth?"

"I think you might be an alien," Booth said.

 

*****

 

"So, she's an alien, right?" Booth asked later.

"Who, her?" the Doctor asked, nodding his chin towards the console, where Bones was looking over some kind of manual she'd dug out from a trunk over the Doctor's vehement protests.

"It's the only thing that makes any sense," Booth said.

The Doctor shook his head. "Insatiable curiosity, never shuts up, always poking around and getting into everything? Give her a banana, because that's a monkey mind for you."

"Thanks," Booth said sarcastically, thinking it sounded like the Doctor deserved a banana too.

 

*****

 

"Earth?" Bones said, stepping out the door. "We're back already?" She looked like she was about dissolve into a toddler's pout, which would probably be worth seeing.

"I think your monkey-man was getting ready for a little naptime," the Doctor said.

"Hey, you just sicced Mars on me out of nowhere," Booth said. "And _algae_."

The Doctor cocked his head and looked Booth up and down. "You want another go at it?"

Booth frowned and stood up taller, straightening his shoulders. "Well," he said. "Yeah."

"Jupiter?"

"Jupiter is a gas giant," Bones broke in.

"Not in 45223," said the Doctor.

"Time machines go backwards, right?" Booth asked. The Doctor sighed.

"You want to go to Woodstock, don’t you? They always want to go to Woodstock."

"Nope," Booth said. "Pittsburgh, January 4, 1976."

"What the hell is that?" Bones asked.

"Picture a cold winter's day," Booth said. "Snow falling from the sky like a giant salt shaker, sixteen degrees with the wind chill. Five minutes to go, the Steelers have just blown a 6-0 lead, and the Raiders are marching down the field –"

"Football?" Bones asked. "You want to use a time machine to see a _football_ game?"

"It's the Immaculate Reception, Bones! Terry Bradshaw passes to Frenchy Fuqua, Jack Tatum takes Fuqua down, and it bounces to rookie running back Franco Harris who takes it forty yards and wins the game!"

"You are kidding me," Bones said, folding her arms.

"What, you wanted to see Margaret Mead and measure skulls in some lab that probably looks exactly like yours. I'm talking about the greatest play in NFL history."

"Margaret Mead worked in Tahiti."

Booth paused. "So. Compromise. Last quarter of the AFC championship, and then we'll go to, you know, Tahiti."

"Doctor?" Bones asked.

The Doctor shrugged, grandly, spreading his arms wide. "I was going to introduce you to George Washington, but it's your decision."

Bones looked at Booth. "Fair trade." They shook.

"Of course," the Doctor added, pulling the door open again. "You can't ask me to pretend that American football is anything but hulking giants playing very bad rugby while wearing mattress pads."

"I couldn't agree more," said Bones as she followed him.

"There's no way she's human," Booth grumbled.


End file.
